


Something to Do With My Hands

by SALJStella



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sex Addiction, Sharing a Bed, Sibling Incest, Slow Burn, and he's super sad, and it's just a mess, infinity war didn't happen fuck you, loki discovers tinder while angsting, this is no surprise to anyone is it, this is what we're doing for now, thor is slightly less sad, thor sucks at texting, until i get a formal apology from the russo brothers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-04-07 13:13:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14081664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SALJStella/pseuds/SALJStella
Summary: They love Thor on Earth. They don't love Loki. He's no king here, he's no god, but there are other ways he can make himself feel like he's worth something.





	1. Prologue: Two Solitudes

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first multi chapter I'm doing with these and it's terrifying but here we go #yolo   
> This first chapter is just a prologue in which Loki leaves his brother on read

Thor is still not used to the sky on Earth. It’s so… dull. Even though aesthetics are usually not that important to him, there are nights he looks outside, at the plain black surrounding this planet, and misses Asgard.

The sky was always a show there. Always something _happening._ The colors were never-ending, in nuances that don’t even exist here. The clouds always swirling, like the valkyries were still riding through them.

The night sky on Earth is just darkness. Like a lid up above, as if that’s going to keep them safe.

He tries to remember what the sky looked like that day, when it failed to keep the intruders away. The monsters Loki brought out of it didn’t make the colors shift, did they? Thor wouldn’t put it past him to bring some kind of light show to his performance, though. It’d be just like him.

Thor sighs, turns away from the view, goes back inside. He resides in the Avengers tower now, mainly in lack of other options. He sought out Stark when he and Loki returned, just hoping to reside in one of the guest rooms. He knew space wasn’t a problem, but seeing the look on Stark’s face made it clear that something else was.

“Sure,” he’d said, tossing the keys in the air, so coldly that Thor forgot to catch them. “It’s all yours. The rest of us aren’t going to use it.”

His jaw was tight, his face slammed shut to hide secrets Thor wasn’t sure he wanted to know. And thus, he’s alone, with nothing but empty spaces and memories of friends he didn’t think it possible to lose.

His steps echo against the shiny floor as he sits down on the couch, that same one where he told them about Mjolnir for what seems like an eternity ago. Thor takes a sip of his beer – humans _do_ know how to make that – and tries his hardest to grasp it. He knows they live shorter lives than he does. Their eternities are fleeting next to his. How can a feeble few of their years become unfathomable to him?

The answer to that is not nearly as difficult as Thor would like it to be. He sighs weakly at his own weakness as he picks his phone out of his pocket. It’s strange, having to use these devices to get in touch with Loki. In Asgard, he was constantly right around the corner.

Then he died, and Thor found himself constantly looking behind him, expecting to see him there.

Maybe that’s the weirdest thing about having to send Loki one of these damned _texts._ Thor is used to him being either right by his side or gone forever.

xxxxxxxxx

_Are you well? Do you need me with you?_

Thor’s message shows up as Loki’s looking through his selection. He rolls his eyes, keeps scrolling. Thor is an idiot, but what else is new. He’s still terrible at Earth’s technology, even though this is _his_ place. He’s the one who belongs here.

Loki is the one who, again, was dragged along. But he’s significantly smarter than Thor, so figuring out cell phones has been no problem. He’s probably gotten a bit too good at it, actually.

A new message pops up, pushing Thor’s back. How symbolic. It’s one of Loki’s old ones. He rarely gets those; they tend to meet just the one time. He makes no secret of what he’s after when they meet up, and they take advantage of that.

_Hey. You up to anything?_

His name is David. Loki’s not sure how many times they’ve been together, they all kind of blur eventually, but David’s nice. Or, tolerable. He’s above average hung and has made no attempt to get to know Loki, which is as high of a bar he’s ever going to set.

_No. Come over_

_I’ll be there in 10. Do some of the prep work for me?_

Loki snorts coldly, fumbles for the cigarettes on the coffee table. Apparently spending those extra few minutes fingering his fuck toy is too much work now, but whatever. He’s got nothing better to do.

He spends an embarrassing amount of time trying to locate the lube, and eventually finds it under the couch. He doesn’t remember much of last night, or other nights, but it must’ve been a ride. He found some chafes on his ass this morning that indicated he got fucked on top of the living room radiator. It doesn’t explain how the lube ended up under the couch, but Loki’s past questioning why he does the things he does. Why he lets others do the things they do to him.

He takes a mindless drag of smoke as he fumbles his pants open, wriggles them down to his knees. Tries to keep his mind blank as he slicks his fingers and slips one inside.

He liked sex in Asgard. It was so simple; he was a prince there. He barely needed to say anything in order to make the maidens giggle, turn their whole bodies to him, opening up. Getting to the men was more work, but not by much. Loki is the God of stories. He had his way with words, and with smiles, with a hand sliding beneath the tavern table.

He’s no prince here. Certainly no god. But he does have his cell phone.

One finger brushes his prostate, and Loki gasps tiredly, using his free hand to keep the cigarette from falling from his lip, onto the couch. There’s no passion in it, purely physical response. Just as it will be when David arrives. His phone buzzes again, Loki picks it up.

_Please respond, brother. I worry for you._

Loki groans, nearly tosses the phone away. His idiot brother. Acting like Loki still has nothing to do besides hanging onto his coattails.

When he opens the door to David a few minutes later, Loki is stretched open, ready. His hand goes straight to David’s crotch, the already half-formed bulge, smiling cruelly. Loki’s head gets pushed into the living room floor, and he moans, like the greedy little slut he is. Eager to feel just about anything else.


	2. It's Not That Bad

Looking back, Loki isn’t sure. Were things simpler back then? He knows of nostalgia, how it distorts the facts. That time in the forest, when they first met since that first time he died, he was sure he just said those things to hurt Thor. Their childhood was more than the shadow Thor cast. It was a big shadow, but looking back, he’s certain that it wasn’t all-consuming.

He knew he was different. Way longer than he wants to admit, and way before Odin told him why. But… there were times when he was happy. Never because of Asgard, the constant summer, the sparring that Father was always raging at his lack of interest in. The happy times were with Frigga in the library, or with Thor. Anywhere with Thor.

Those memories hurt more than the bad ones. They float up like beer caps, Loki can’t even drown them in alcohol. (Which is not from lack of effort)

He wasn’t always in Thor’s shadow. And the seasons shift on Earth; the heat is not constant. Yet the darkness he’s crushed under here feels heavier than any shadow cast on him as a child. There are nights he sees it looming from the corners, just waiting for him to let his guard down. Ready to swallow him whole.

 

 

Loki’s not sure how it started. They came back to Earth, Thor was at home, practically leaped out of that damned spaceship, and Loki remembers the resentment, slithering deep into his insides, like he’d swallowed a serpent.

It was a childish kind of envy, he hasn’t felt it since he took the throne of Asgard. Loki was ashamed of himself, and Thor’s genuinely happy expression when he looked at him didn’t help.

“Don’t worry, brother,” he said, putting an arm around Loki’s shoulders, leading him down the walkway. “Earthlings have short memories. And a lot has happened since you were here last.”

Loki shrugged his arm off, despite himself.

“You told me,” he said coldly. “You and the rest of the freakshow saved the world again, from someone without my distinct sense of flair, adding an obviously less interesting chapter to the overall uninteresting history of this planet.”

They were off the ship, finally setting foot on solid ground after months of warp speed traveling. Loki realized, with a cold fell swoop through his body, that he couldn’t have felt more lost if he was falling off the rainbow bridge again, floating between worlds.

“Surely you didn’t think you were the only one who’d try to take over Earth?” Thor asked teasingly as their fellow passengers started to emerge from their ship, like they couldn’t believe they were actually at their destination.

“Who else would want it? Look at this place.”

They’d landed on a field. Loki finally stopped, looking around, despite better judgment. Yellowing grass, woods, not unlike the place where they said their goodbyes to Odin. Loki felt a similar budding sense of panic as he’d done back then.

Thor had halted next to him. Loki barely noticed, even though Thor was pretty much the only thing keeping him grounded at that point. He looked at this and saw home, saw the people as the ones he was supposed to protect. Loki didn’t understand him. He couldn’t.

“You’ll discover things here worth staying for, Loki,” Thor murmured, like this was only meant for them to hear. “Just like you did on Sakaar.”

He was kind of right about that.

 

 

He loses track of the days.

It’s not that different from when he was imprisoned. Same tedium. Same itching for stimuli, for chaos, to _do something,_ a hollow that could never be filled.

Loki’s not sure if he’s more bored here than he was in his cell. He could appreciate the aesthetics of his chambers there, and he’s put no efforts into decorating the tiny studio apartment that he’s hypnotized a clueless, sloppily shaved landlord into lending him.

He’s not sure why. He has a creeping suspicion that if he’d put effort into his surroundings here, he would simply find out that aesthetics was yet another thing that didn’t matter to him anymore.

Loki sighs and reaches for the cigarettes on the nightstand.

He wishes he could sleep.

There was nothing else for him to do. Maybe it’s just that simple. Thor stayed by his side long enough to make sure he was stable, which sated Loki more than he’d like to admit. It made him all the more bitter when he left. Thor had Avenger friends he had to check up on. His mission. That _unity_ that made him completely fine with staying in this wretched place.

Thor is that kind of man, though. He’d find his place anywhere. Even that first time Loki visited him here to tell him his father had died, when he so bitterly and viciously _wanted_ his brother to be miserable, he knew he could never keep Thor weak enough to actually defeat him. He could bring him down. But Thor found a girlfriend, someone who fell in love with him despite him being a complete outsider. Maybe even because of it. It made him adorable.

Loki lights his cigarette, stands up from the bed. There’s no use in trying to sleep. When he picks up his phone, the screen clock reads 2:34 AM.

Loki sighs. The club circuit will be in their final stages. By the time it takes him to get ready, most of them will be shutting down. Whoever’s willing to take him home will be desperate.

Then again, so is he. It’s dark outside, so he puts minimum effort into his appearance, just brushes his teeth sloppily and puts his leather pants on, the ones that almost have to be peeled off when they are inevitably removed later. He lights up his second cigarette before he’s left the building; it’s basically only a matter of how many he can fit into his woken hours.

Loki was glad that Thor didn’t go back to the Jane woman when they returned here, he’s not going to lie. But he was also kind of surprised.

Thor was always the ones they fell in love with. Even back in Asgard, when the maidens were fawning over them both, Loki was the one they went to for the night. He certainly didn’t mind, but it was fascinating to him how Thor could find it in him to _stay_ with these women. There he was, future king of Asgard, coming protector of the Nine Realms, and Thor still took his time to kiss his girlfriends goodbye when they left the next morning. He took them on little trips on his horse, showed them hidden parts of the forests. Like they _mattered._

Loki wouldn’t talk to Thor when he came home from those trips. He never asked himself why. He’d stare daggers across the tavern when he spotted Thor with a girl, following every brush of his broad hand across her cheek, and possibly transform the mead in Thor’s goblet into snakes, if he were feeling confrontational.

 

 

He winds up at a place he knows all too well, a few blocks down from his house. Loki sits down at the bar with his drink, makes no attempt to talk to anyone, simply makes show out of stretching his long legs down the side of the barstool. He knows what works. He doesn’t want to choose, he wants to be chosen.

It doesn’t take long. It never does. And despite how familiar the situation is, Loki gets the same bitter kind of high every time he sees it. The smile, the slow drag of eyes across his body. He doesn’t see the other’s face, but he wants him. That’s all that matters.

Later, Loki’s biting into his wrist as he’s being fucked into the mattress. His other arm is pinned to the headboard, it’ll leave bruises. The man who took him isn’t that drunk, while Loki managed to down a few drinks while waiting for anyone, everything is blurred at the edges and he feels the brush against his prostate through a haze. The other finishes with an undignified grunt as Loki’s cock is bobbing across the bedding, untouched.

There’s a slick sound as he pulls out. Loki moans weakly at the loss, of his hole being bared. This is always the worst part. Warm hands leaving his body, sweat cooling and he’s just cold, clammy, aching and hard.

“Sorry,” the man says, putting a disinterested hands on Loki’s cock. “You want me to…”

“No,” Loki slurs, rolling over on his side. “I’m going to sleep.”

He doesn’t.

 

 

Somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, Loki wonders if he were ever meant for greatness.

He wonders if all he was meant for was getting fucked on filthy sheets.

 

 

“I’m sorry, he’s… asleep, I think, but I’ll…”

“You didn’t answer my question!”

“He- I- we were at a club, and he just…”

The unmistakable sound of someone being slammed into a wall is what finally brings Loki to his senses. It’s not kind to his hangover.

“Where is he?” snarls what he now recognizes as his brother’s voice.

“He’s in the fucking bedroom! I swear, I…”

Loki wraps the sheet around him and walks, almost steadily, into the living room. The sight greeting him is not as surprising as one might’ve thought. The man who seemed so big when he pinned Loki down last night is rather meekly as Thor is holding him against the wall, his feet dangling over the floor. And while Loki hasn’t had a chance to look in the mirror yet, the expression on Thor’s face when he sees him feels unjustified. He can’t look _that_ bad.

“Loki! What have you…”

“He’s not the best I’ve had, but certainly not deserving punishment,” Loki says calmly, beckoning Thor to put him down. “Have you seen my cigarettes?”

He starts looking around the living room, finally finding his smokes under a crumpled bag of chips. There’s a _thump_ of his lover’s feet hitting the ground, and a desperate scramble across the floor before the door slams behind him. Loki can’t contain a smile across his lighter.

“Did you really need to scare him like that, Thor? Didn’t even dare to go fetch his clothes.”

“He’s lucky I let him use the door. I was about to throw him out the window. Loki…”

Thor walks up to him in two quick strides, like he’s scared Loki’s going to run away, which is fair. Loki forces himself to meet Thor’s gaze, to seem without qualm, even though he wants nothing more than for his brother to go away. He missed him so during those first few weeks, and now can’t for the life of him remember why.

“How did you find me?” he asks softly, making sure to blow smoke into Thor’s face.

“Stark helped me. What’s happened to you?”

Loki grins again. “We’ve had the discussion about the birds and bees, Thor. Do you want the specifics about this particular night?”

A streak of pain flies across Thor’s face, like he was hoping there was a strange man in nothing but his underwear in Loki’s apartment for some other reason. Moron.

“That’s not what I meant,” Thor presses, which is almost true. “Why haven’t you answered my text messages? What’s with the…” He looks around. The empty whiskey bottles on the floor, the lingering shadow of cigarette ashes across every surface. “Why do you live like this?”

“I’ve kept busy. Did you want anything in particular?”

“I’ve been worried.”

“That’s not my problem. I was sure you’d be busy saving the world, how do you expect me to know when you require my company?”

It’s like the flick of a lighter. Suddenly Thor is right by Loki’s face, his fingers wrapped around his upper arms. Loki’s hand slips on the sheet, he has to scramble to get it back up around his waist, and Thor’s breath is on his face, hot and insistent. Loki’s pretty sure his blush creeps all the way down his neck.

“Stop this nonsense,” Thor hisses furiously. “You know what I mean! You haven’t been eating, and why all the drinking? All the…” his voice changes at the word, like it kills him to say it. _“…men?”_

Loki lolls his head back to look him in the face. He just wants to hurt Thor right now, say just about anything to make him go away.

He doesn’t mind living the way he does. Not the slumming, the drinking, the whoring. He barely even saw the scattered bottles across the floor until right now, when Thor sees them. He sees himself through his brother’s eyes and he hates it. He was fine. Everything was fine.

“Who I have fuck me is none of your concern, Thor,” he says, punctuating his words with a drag from his cigarette. “You’ve got new friends. Go to them. I don’t need you here.”

“Really?” Thor growls, and Loki feels a hollow sort of satisfaction at his spite, knowing he managed to drag his _noble_ brother down to his own level. “Are you doing _so_ well on your own?” He grabs Loki’s smoking hand, eyeing the ring of fresh bruises around his wrist. Loki wishes the thumb he ran across them wasn’t so gentle.

For once, Loki’s at a loss for words. Thor is the only one who can do that to him, and it makes him all the more furious. Wants to make Thor angry again; he can handle that.

“I’ve lost you enough times, Loki,” Thor says, softer now. “If you think this is all it takes for me to give up on you, you’re wrong.”

Loki can’t handle the hurt. He won’t meet his brother’s gaze, and hates how his hand trembles when he takes another drag, his wrist still in Thor’s absolute grip.

“Maybe I’ve given up on _you_ ,” he says flatly, dusting off some of the magic he still remembers to disappear from Thor’s grip and speak up again from the bedroom doorframe. “Leave me, Thor.”

He slams the door shut before Thor has a chance to answer him.


	3. Night and Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who liked and left comments, please bear with me as I torture characters that we all love endlessly

The cold scared him a lot more than Thor would’ve liked to admit. He hid it from the other Avengers for as long as he could; he prayed to his Gods every day the first winter he spent on Earth, and that assignment they had in Russia damn near paralyzed him until Stark was suddenly behind him, his warm metal hand on Thor’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he said, with that glint in his eyes that always made Thor think of Loki. “The guys we got waiting for us are worse than whatever it is you’re back here mumbling over.”

Thor had looked away from him. Didn’t want to be seen this way, but looking back, he would’ve left his friends to fight that battle if he hadn’t been.

It felt so far from home. Despite the way he’d left Asgard, feeling the snow against his face after centuries of summer made him almost dizzy with… something. He wasn’t even sure it was sorrow. It was just so foreign, and he didn’t know what to do with it.

Thor wishes he’d asked Loki more about how he felt about the seasons on Earth. It must be terrifying, after feeling like a monster in the summers of Asgard and like a bastard in the winter of Jotunheim. Loki feels things so much. There’s so much Thor wishes he’d asked him.

He walks away from Loki’s apartment building without any answers. None given and none to give.

 

“Oh, god…” Loki groans, strings of mucus hanging from his lips.

He flushes the toilet before he starts retching again. He ate some toast earlier today, in some futile attempt to make things up to Thor, out of guilt he wasn’t sure why he was feeling. It only seems to have upset his stomach further. After living on nothing but shots and the occasional food truck fries, he didn’t consider food a necessity anymore. He’s not human. He’s not tied to their weaknesses.

Loki sits down on the bathroom floor, leaning his damp forehead into his hand. It’s trembling. He needs fluids. His body’s acting so annoyingly human and he hates it.

As if to remind him of his other baser urges, his phone buzzes in his pocket.

_Hey cutie ;)_

Loki’s stomach turns again, he has to put the back of his hand against his mouth. He doesn’t even think about whom he matches with. They barely have faces to him anymore.

_You free? Cum over?_

_I’m not well._

_You don’t have to be ;)_

Loki gives him his address without thinking much of it. Then he manages to drag himself off the floor and drink some water.

He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror when he returns to the bathroom and feels a weird kind of comfort at it: _hey, I really do look like shit._ His eyes are sunken, lips greenish in a stark-white face. Well. Whoever’s coming over this time explicitly said it didn’t matter how he was doing. He does have the courtesy to brush his teeth, though, just in case this is one of those who wants to kiss.

He’s better this way. The way he was on Sakaar. Surrounded by people, but always on his own. Loved for his wits, his silver tongue, even though no one actually knew him.

Eventually, there’s a knock on the door. Loki twists the knob, barely looking up.

“Hey. Come in.”

“Hey. You must be…” The man stops in his tracks. Loki is grateful he doesn’t catch the look on his face. “Whoa. You okay?”

“I told you, I’m ill. Nothing I’ll pass to anyone, though. You want to do this, or what?”

“Yeah, sure, but… are you sure you should…” Loki cuts him off with a theatrical sigh.

“I’ll find someone else to rail me, then. Your loss.”

The man is not hard to persuade. Loki is grateful he doesn’t kiss, though. He doesn’t want to taste anything right now.

They don’t get that far, though. Loki is having his shirt removed as there’s a crash and a clatter of his front door falling to the floor. The other man gives a yelp and immediately covers himself up, but, again, Loki is probably not as surprised as he could’ve been as Thor steps through the debris with that idiot smile on his face.

“Hello, brother!” he bellows and pulls Loki into an unreciprocated hug. Loki sneers into his shoulder. “Thought I’d find you here!”

“I’m busy,” Loki says dryly. His companion is making odd squeaking noises looking at Thor, who of course is head and shoulders above him. Thor doesn’t stop grinning as he extends his hand.

“Good to meet you. I’m Thor Odinson.”

The man slowly accepts the handshake.

“I’m… Patrick. I was just…”

“You seem like a good man, Patrick.” Thor takes off the stupid jean jacket he’s started wearing. Fashion is apparently not a priority to him on this planet. “If you make sure to leave this second, I’ll refrain from tossing you out the window.”

Loki rolls his eyes. _Still with the window?_ Patrick, who luckily has managed to get his shirt off, quickly gathers himself and scuffles out the door. Thor doesn’t stop grinning through all of it, and Loki feels himself seething.

“Thor, please tell me what it was about our last exchange that made you think I wanted you here.”

“Oh, but have I ever cared the slightest what you want, brother?”

Thor keeps his hands on his shoulders, and it tugs uncomfortably at something in Loki’s heart, the familiarity of it. How many times has he been standing like this? With Thor’s broad, warm hands on him, right after doing something stupid.

The moment reaches inside, that place inside him that Loki can’t kill with pills, or booze, or sex, and he can’t even make himself _want_ to pull away from it.

“Tell me what you want, and go,” Loki settles for saying. Tells himself that he allows Thor to touch him because he chased a potential fuck away. He does so crave physical touch, after all.

Thor’s smile falters slightly. His thumb is suddenly on Loki’s jaw line, barely the ghost of a touch, and still Loki blushes as he has to swallow a lump in his throat. By the Gods, he has to pull himself together. He’s like a lovesick teenage girl.

“You look like hell,” Thor says. “What happened?”

Loki runs his tongue across cracked lips. His mouth still tastes like sick. He was hoping it wouldn’t be as obvious. Or maybe just hoping Thor wouldn’t still see right through him.

“No reason to get petty.”

“Stop it. Have you eaten?”

Loki looks away. Thor’s disappointed silence is like a cold breeze through the room, and he nods.  

“I meant what I said,” Thor says, after a moment dragged out too long. “I’m not leaving you again. There’s not a spell you can cast that’s going to shut me out this time.”

Loki maintains his stern look. Not that it’d fool Thor. He doesn’t know why he keeps trying.

“Why stop doing something,” he says slowly, “you’re so _good_ at, brother?”

He relishes in the bitter satisfaction of seeing Thor’s expression fall.

“You’ve got friends here, Thor. Go to them. Rejoin your little carnival. Leave me to my business.”

Thor looks like Loki’s struck him across the face, but it only lasts a moment. He shakes his head impatiently, retrieves a duffel bag he apparently had on his back and dumps it on the floor.

“I told you,” he says, and that _fucking_ grin is back now, “there’s nothing you can say, or do. I’m staying here. You can summon an army of Valkyries for all I care, I’m not going to leave this apartment until we run out of food.”

He turns around and flings himself onto the couch. Loki looks between the duffel bag, apparently containing the other two outfits he’s seen Thor wear since they returned to Earth, and his brother, putting his stupid feet on Loki’s coffee table, looking like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

Thor has won. He usually does. And yet, seeing his brother back by his side and so obviously _wanting_ to be there, Loki can’t bring himself to mind.

“Then we should leave right now,” he finally says. “If I’m going to keep you fed, we better stock up half a Wal-Mart store.”

He forces himself not to smile back, though Thor looks like he just hung the moon.

“But fix my fucking door first.”

 

They go grocery shopping together. It should be absurd, but somehow isn’t.

 

“What happened to them?” Loki asks later that night. Thor is half asleep, his freakishly long limbs stretched across Loki’s lap on the couch.

“Who?” Thor grumbles and opens his eyes. Loki gives him a look, and Thor smiles, though there’s an undertone to it.

“I don’t know. Rogers is gone, Stark won’t tell me why. All he’ll say is that they’ve betrayed him somehow.”

Loki snorts, despite himself.

“Earth’s mightiest heroes, isn’t that what you called them?”

“I did. _Hey,”_ Thor adds in a complaining tone when he registers what Loki said.

Loki laughs, even though he hasn’t had a single drink tonight. The irony isn’t lost on either of them. If Thor’s bar of forgiveness were knocked down by a simple betrayal, they would’ve killed each other centuries ago.

“Don’t be cruel, Loki,” Thor says, slapping his shoulder. “You can’t expect too much of them. We can’t all be Gods of Mischief.”

“I know that. It’s funny because _you_ expected more of them.”

“You’ve always been the smart one.”

“I know that, too.”

They’re silent for a bit.

“I’m sorry I left,” Thor says eventually.

Loki doesn’t know what to say, even though he’s not exactly surprised. Of course Thor would apologize eventually. Loki may be the smart one, but Thor’s the one with the conscience.

“I thought they needed me,” Thor goes on. “And they probably do. But… you do, too. I keep forgetting that.”

There’s a stitch of annoyance through whatever else it is that Loki’s feeling.

“I’ve been fine,” he says, without much ardor. Thor doesn’t bother answering, so they fall quiet again, and that’s when the familiarity of the situation gets almost overwhelming to Loki again.

He hasn’t had a drop of alcohol since Thor came. He managed to eat some of the frozen pizza he was forced to buy on their grocery run, it’s settling nicely in his stomach. He hasn’t checked his phone all night, though he’s felt it buzz. He’s smoking, but that’s second nature to him by now. And Thor is next to him, warm and solid and drowsy, they’re bickering, they’re tangled in each other’s limbs.

It’s like they’re children again. Before Earth, before Thanos, all of the stupid shit they’ve done to each other and themselves. It’s so comfortable and safe and suddenly Loki hears nothing but the rush of blood in his ears, sending his heartbeat racing and dampening his palms.

“I’m going to bed,” he settles for saying, somewhat steadily. “Get off.”

Thor lifts his legs out of his lap. Loki stands up, pulls his t-shirt over his head and drops it on the floor.

“We’re cleaning this place tomorrow, by the way,” Thor says behind him. Loki hears him kicking off his shoes. “I will not live like an animal.”

“Don’t snore like one, then.”

Loki catches another glimpse of his brother as he turns around. Thor has undone his belt buckle, pulling it out of its loops before curling up on the couch. The couch that Loki knows from experience is a terrible place to sleep, riddled with crumbs and bodily fluids.

He saw enough of Stark’s living quarters before he was smashed into its floor to know what lifestyle Thor must be giving up by being here. He could be reaping all the benefits of being an Avenger, one of these puny _Earth’s mightiest heroes,_ by now. And yet, here he is, on Loki’s couch.

Tending to the villain that the Avengers managed to chase off.

Loki slams his bedroom door to avoid having to analyze whatever that makes him feel.


	4. Safe

It was probably their first night on the ship. Everyone else had been asleep, and Loki had gotten sick of Thor’s groans of pain, while rubbing his empty eye socket.

“Come here.” He sat up in bed, beckoning wearily to his brother. “I’m not listening to this all night.”

Thor lifted his head, somehow managing to look surprised, as if Loki could’ve avoided hearing him.

“Can you fix it?”

“Of course I can.”

Thor swept back the covers, padded across their chamber and sat down on the floor next to Loki’s bed. The very tip of his new haircut still reached his brother’s chest, and he tipped his head back, leaning it into Loki’s lap.

Loki’s fingertips were feather-light on his temples, and Thor’s eye drifted shut. The sigh he let out, ghosting across Loki’s face, sounded like he’d been running for decades and was finally safe.

Even though Loki had suggested it, Thor’s sudden and very real physicality, the _touching_ , was so strange. Thor hadn’t been real to him. Not in this way, not with the smell of his sweat and divine electricity lingering, the coarseness of his stubble under Loki’s fingers. Not in many years. Loki hadn’t let him be.

“It’s been too long,” Thor muttered out, as Loki felt the magic sift through his hands, flowing across his Thor’s skin.

“What has?”

“You used to be my own personal healer. I can’t even remember the last time you were in this proximity without trying to kill me.”

Loki smiled. It had a bitter aftertaste.

The bruises after sparring practice. The broken fingers from playing with Mjolnir. He’d fix them all. In Thor’s chambers, late at night, always staying up too late. Giggling in the dark.

It was so long ago. Yet here they were. The tenderness he’d planned to lock away for the rest of his days, suddenly as real and heavy as Thor’s head in his lap.

“I’m not going to give you your damned eye back just to rip it back out again.”

Thor snorted and removed his eye patch. His new eye shone back up at Loki, bright blue and full of promises Loki couldn’t ever trust.

“How lucky you are,” Loki said, couldn’t contain his smile. “Not only did you get a new eye, but its first sight is of me.”

“Get off.” Thor pushed his hands away, but not before giving them a slight squeeze. Just out of gratitude, Loki decided.

 

“Do you miss it?”

Loki has to ask eventually. Even though he’s certain he won’t like the answer. It’s been a coming disaster long enough, lying dormant. Might as well bring it up now, when everything’s all nice and comfortable. He’s smoking by his tiny kitchen table, Thor eating that disgusting colorful cereal he loves so much, straight out of the box, his feet on Loki’s chair.

“What?”

“Asgard.”

“Why would I?” Thor throws his head back, emptying what must be half of the box into his mouth. “We didn’t have Fruit Loops there. I wouldn’t survive in the wild at this point.”

Loki rolls his eyes.

“You know what I mean. You were a prince. It was home, for centuries. You’re too much of a sap to just have forgotten about it.”

Thor puts his box of atrocity down on the table. Then he smiles, that way he does when he thinks Loki’s adorable for not understanding something so simple. (And he smiles that way because he knows Loki hates it)

“I don’t miss Asgard. It consisted of its people, and we brought the ones left back here.”

“That’s my point. Half of our people were slaughtered.” Loki doesn’t know why he keeps prodding into a subject that frightens him. Must be that deep vein of self-destructiveness. “You cared about them. You loved them. Did you just forget? Is it really that simple?”

Thor shakes his head.

“I mourn the ones we lost. But Asgard wasn’t my home for many years.”

He keeps looking at the cereal box. Loki feels a tenderness unfolding in his chest. He could push it back that night on the ship, but there it is again. Like a flower opening up to the sun.

“I miss mother and father,” Thor goes on, softer now. “The Warriors. But I do believe home is where your friends are.”

Loki narrows his lips minutely, even though Thor isn’t looking at him.

“You’ll consider Earth your home, rather than the place where you spent the first millennium of your life.”

A crease finally appears between Thor’s brows as he looks up.

“You don’t miss it either. Why should I –“

“Because you were at _home_ there,” Loki bites back, before he can stop himself, and takes a drag of his cigarette. “They were your people, your palace, your throne. What is there for me to miss?”

Thor shakes his head violently.

“We spent that millennium there together, you were right by my side. You can’t tell me it was never home to you.”

Loki looks away, taking another quivering drag. Thor doesn’t understand. Loki’s not going to be the one explaining to him.

 

Loki’s stopped going on Tinder. He doesn’t ask himself why, and he wouldn’t be able to give an answer anyway. Thor shows the courtesy of not asking him why there hasn’t been any men over since he got there, or he just figured he scared Loki straight that last time.

As if they hadn’t both chased the other’s girlfriends off more times than they could count. Loki’s always told himself that they’re not like other siblings in any other aspect, why would they be common in the way they’re attached to each other?

He’s never been part of another family, no matter how many times he wished he were. He has no concept of how brothers are supposed to be with each other, and he’s never cared to inquire. Probably because of the budding suspicion that the answer would just be another thing labeling him a freak.

“Stop that,” he says to Thor one night, when Thor is once again about to fold his freakishly proportionate body onto the couch, sagging dangerously close to the floor under his weight.

Thor lets go of the pillow he’s trying to fluff into an acceptable shape.

“What?”

“You don’t have to keep sleeping on the couch. You’ll break the damn thing.”

“It’s a bit too late to pretend you’re sentimental about this couch.”

Loki rolls his eyes.

“Just get in here. We can go get something else for you tomorrow. A… cot, or whatever they call it.”

Thor only hesitates a moment before grabbing his manhandled pillow and standing up. Loki strips himself of his tee, consciously dropping it on the floor and relishing in Thor’s annoyed sigh behind him. Loki grins as he gets under the covers.

“You can leave whenever you want, you know. I told you I didn’t want you here.”

Thor gives him a glance as he steps out of his jeans, theatrically folding them and putting them on the lonely chair besides the bed.

“You’re going to have to try a little harder than that, brother.”

Loki doesn’t. Not that night or any of the other nights. They don’t sleep tangled in each other’s limbs, like during their secret sleepovers back in the palace, but at least there’s a solid, warm presence next to Loki through the nights, making him feel oddly at home on a planet he loathes.

They don’t get Thor another bed. It takes a while for that to register with Loki’s usual drive to ruin everything. Maybe even he’s gotten tired of the drama.

He teaches Thor how to properly use a phone, then immediately regrets it. Thor was terrible enough at texting as it was, but for some reason, he takes it up as his absolute favorite way of communication.

He also refuses to use actual words in them unless he has to. Loki can text him from the store, asking if they need anything, and have to wait patiently for Thor to find an emoji for every single item of food he wants.

Loki could of course call him. He doesn’t.

It’s not even like when they were children, even though that was probably the last time they lived together without Loki trying to kill Thor. They bicker just as much, there’s the occasional wrestling match. But without the added weight of one being the prince, their father’s constant, all-seeing eye following them through the palace courtyards. It was like it could see through walls, see them no matter how far away Loki tried to stay from him.

It’s like they finally got their fresh start, a thousand years too late. Away from Loki’s resentment, Thor’s arrogance. All the old scars fading.

At some point, Loki thoughtlessly steps out of the bathroom shirtless. Thor glances past him, and gets a tormented expression that Loki doesn’t understand at first, until he remembers the scar.

The shadow of Algrim’s spear is still there, despite how good things are now. A faded pink line down the middle of his torso. The second time he died for his brother.

Loki doesn’t think about it. Just like the mayhem that his apartment used to be, he doesn’t see it until it’s reflected on Thor’s face.

“Don’t be like that,” Loki says as he pulls a clean tee over his head. “It’s fine. It was a long time ago.”

He dares to look back up on Thor. He’s still staring at Loki’s chest, like the scar is glowing at him through the cotton. Eventually, he looks away and pulls back the covers.

“Does it hurt?” he asks when Loki is next to him on the mattress, picking up a book from the nightstand.

“I told you, I’m fine.”

“You’ve told me that many times. It’s been a lie almost every single one.”

Loki gives him a dark glance from the corner of his eye. Then he gives up.

“It hurt a long time. It wouldn’t heal while I was in father’s body, so I had to wait it out during the nights.”

He has to pretend to keep reading so he doesn’t have to see Thor’s reaction. Thor swallows, seeming to try to find his words.

“Loki, I… I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t ask you to be.”

“But I am.” Thor’s tone is desperate, like he’s scared Loki’s about to disappear. Again. “You died for me, for Jane. For Asgard. I never told you, I…”

It’s like he runs out of words in the middle of the sentence. Loki’s glad for it. The fingers clutching to his book are whitening from his grip.

He didn’t think about the scar. Just like he said, it’s been a long time. Hell, of all the people he’s been naked in front of since he came to Earth, none of them have asked him about it. Why does Thor have to be like this?

Loki figured himself safe, since Thor doesn’t say anything else while he’s reading. Then, when he’s turned off the lights, he feels Thor’s broad index finger brush against his cheek in the dark.

“Goodnight, brother.”

This one touch feels infinitely more intimate than anything else Loki’s done on this bed. Cold twists into his guts, and he turns away from Thor, wrapping himself in his covers like he’s trying to shield himself from danger.

Loki’s not sure if that’s what starts it. It doesn’t feel that way. More like this is what things were always headed for, the way things always turn out with him.

It’s too damn _safe._ He keeps expecting Thor to leave, he always does, and yet every time he comes home, Thor is still there. If by chance he’s off doing something, he texts Loki, making sure he knows. Like he never again wants to make that mistake.

Loki doesn’t drink as much now, either. He tries to eat semi-regularly, simply because there’s something happening in Thor’s eyes when Loki skips meals that makes it not worth it. If he can’t, Loki at least sits next to him on the couch or the counter tops when Thor wolfs down his mac and cheese, because he’ll put anything in his body, apparently.

In short, things are absolutely perfect. So of course Loki has to ruin it.

It’s Thor’s own fucking fault. He has these dumb _expectations_. The way Thor keeps looking at him like he can’t believe how lucky he is, getting to spend his fleeting time in a tiny apartment with Loki, going on these little day trips through New York.

He so obviously chose this. Not the Avengers. Not the throne of Asgard. He chose to be Loki’s brother, nothing more. Loki keeps waiting for him to realize the mistake, but months pass with no real change.

They go see the Statue of Liberty, and Thor is ecstatic. He forces Loki to pose for pictures with that dumb little statue. Like the rightful King of Asgard can get excited about Earth’s measly monuments of victory, as long as _Loki’s_ there with him.

It was dumb to think it would last. Loki doesn’t know why he keeps getting his hopes up.

 

The unavoidable night comes. Loki waits until Thor’s starting to yawn and stretch out on the couch, so he has an excuse to not bring him, even though this whole thing is just a set-up to disappoint him. Then he puts his leather pants on again, and pretends to check his hair in the bathroom mirror as he feels Thor’s eyes on him from the living room.

“What’s the occasion?” Thor finally asks.

Loki can’t even bring himself to quip something back. Despite that he knows, on some level, that what he’s about to do hurts himself more than Thor, the guilt is like a physical weight on his heartbeat.

“Just want to look nice,” he says absent-mindedly, stroking his hair behind his ears.

“Will you be home late?”

“Probably. Just go to bed.”

Loki picks up his jacket and cigarettes before heading for the door. He doesn’t meet Thor’s gaze.

“Bring your phone,” Thor says, before getting off the couch and walking towards the bedroom.

Loki wishes he’d say just about anything else. But he nods, picks up his phone, and turns away.

“See you later,” he says and slams the door behind him.

The first few steps down the pavement are absurdly painful, but Loki forces himself to keep going. Once he reaches the end of the block, he’s put a cigarette between his lips, and almost fooled himself into thinking he’s okay.

In hindsight, Loki can almost compare it to when the Tesseract had its grip on him. It’s like he’s walking beside himself, seeing himself about to do something that’ll potentially destroy his entire world, knowing that he’s not the one making this decision, but also painfully aware of the tiny grain of his own selfishness, lying beneath it all.

Just some tiny part of himself for that dark otherness to build on, and it’s enough.

He ends up in that bar again, of course. It’s a weekday, which means fewer men out drinking, so he manages to get completely shit-faced before he feels a gentle hand on his neck.

“Hey there, cutie.”

Loki has to work to even turn around, _(as if seeing his face makes a fucking difference to you),_ but he gets there. Even though he sees the other man through a fog of booze and self-loathing, he recognizes his expression.

He’s done this enough to know them all. There’s the sweet, caring ones, more concerned about getting him home safe than anything else. There’s the fun-loving ones, the smooth-talking ones, the desperate, toothless ones. And the ones like this one. If you’re being technical, you could label him dangerous.

The man in front of him now just loves this, how delirious Loki is, how helpless. It wouldn’t be past him to simply pick Loki unconscious out of the gutter and fuck him in an alleyway. But of course, Loki doesn’t care.

“Come on,” he says dully, and grabs the outreached hand.

Loki is about to drag the guy back to his place, but he can’t bring himself to, despite earnest attempts, so he settles on the men’s room. The entirely uninspiring routine of bracing himself against the stall door, lube, condom, not enough prep. Loki doesn’t even bother fake-moaning. His sluggish mind is busy cursing himself for still having enough of a conscience to not bring this man home, to get fucked with Thor in the next room.

Maybe tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But Loki is a demigod, you cry. Why would he scar?  
> because we're doing angst here that's fucking why


	5. Holding On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey dudes, sorry about the wait. My computer has been a bit of a cunt. 
> 
> Also, this chapter includes a non graphic rape attempt.

The night surrounding them was spectacularly Asgardian. A light, cool breeze rustling the fruit trees. The smell of the fallen golden apples was still sweet, and it’d be another few days until they fermented, spread that distinct air of rot across the palace courtyards.

They used to climb those trees, probably too high up. Just like Loki to bring Thor that tiny bit too far from harmless fun and closer to disaster.

Thor was holding Loki’s hair back as he clutched to the balcony rail, throwing up on the grass below. Father had finally let them have their first drinks, probably realizing it’d be impossible to let only Thor have a pint, so might as well start providing Loki as well, while they were still only drinking during the royal feasts. And since Loki had no concept of _enough,_ of course he’d try to out-drink his brother, despite being half his size.

Thus, this is where they’d end up. The party was still going inside, and they were out on the balcony, Loki finally having nothing left inside him and sank down on the floor, trembling. Thor sat down next to him. He was just drunk enough to find this kind of funny.

“You’re going to finally admit you’ve had enough?” he snickered, shoving Loki gently with his shoulder. Loki made a low, tormented sound, leaning his elbows to his knees.

“I hate this. I fucking hate this.”

He seemed to be talking to himself more than Thor, and it didn’t matter anyway, because Thor just kept giggling.

“You shouldn’t try so hard to beat me, then.”

“No. This. All of this.” Loki gestured feebly with one hand, towards nothing. Everything.

Thor finally turned to him. He still wasn’t present enough to grasp what Loki was saying, but he saw him now. His brother looked so small.

They were quiet for a bit. Thor had no idea for how long.

“I saw you were talking to one of the maidens in there,” he said eventually. “Don’t you want to…”

Loki cut him off, shaking his head frantically like he couldn’t imagine anything more disgusting.

“No. Let me stay in your chambers tonight.”

Thor turned to him again.

“If that’s what you want.”

“I’ll make a double in my bed in case father comes in.” Loki leaned his head in his hands again. His hair fell away from his pale neck, almost shimmering in the moonlight. “I cannot go back in there, Thor.”

Thor nodded, even though Loki didn’t look at him. Even through his intoxication, there was a soft prick at his heart, being this close to his brother and knowing somehow he was light years away from being able to ease his pain.

“Come on, then,” he said, getting back on his feet and dragging Loki along, with no help from him.

With as many nights as they spent in each other’s chambers, it’s a wonder Odin never caught them.

Now, centuries later, when he’s alone in bed for once, Thor can’t say why they kept it a secret. Just like the many things he feels for Loki, it’s something that snuck up on him, something he can’t help.

 

Loki can only blame whatever scraps of decency he’s got left in him for not bringing the men back to their place. At least at first.

He has no idea how or when he got back there after that first night, but he’s eventually woken up by the sound of Thor placing a cup of coffee on the nightstand. Loki feels his disappointment, it’s like a cold mist through the apartment, even before he’s opened his eyes.

Eventually, Loki lifts his head. Thor is standing at his bedside, scruffy but clean, hair damp from the shower. Loki prefers not to think about how he looks himself.

“Rise and shine,” Thor says. His smile isn’t even teasing, it’s so goddamn _patient,_ and Loki buries his head in his pillow again. Thor takes the hint, and Loki hears his footsteps disappear into the living room.

“Let’s not make a habit of this, shall we?”

But they do. It’s so simple.

Loki has no idea why he stopped doing this. It’s all he knows, the only thing he’s good at. It’s hard at first, seeing how it affects Thor, but he learns to use even that to his advantage. It’s easier to leave Thor at home every night, if Loki can pretend it’s his disapproval that drives him out the door.

It hurts Thor. Loki comes home later every night, and it _hurts_ him, which adds to the confusing knot of feelings Loki needs to numb. Things have been okay for just a few weeks, how is that supposed to deter him from centuries of doing nothing but cause pain?

So, Loki keeps it up. At first, he only drinks at the bars, but then it gets so bad that he needs a rebound drink the mornings after, and suddenly, he’s got booze at home again. Midgardian booze, but he never had Thor’s tolerance level for alcohol, anyway.

His initial reluctance to bring the men home is quickly wavered. Thor already knows what he’s doing, and while Loki’s standards are low, and he’s usually too out of it to even know that it’s happening, he does prefer to get fucked in a bed rather than a bathroom stall.

That’s how, after weeks of sharing bed, Thor is again sleeping on the couch, and Loki is back to living the exact way he did before Thor came back. The first morning after he brought someone home, Thor makes an attempt at a joke at having to listen to them fuck through the living room wall. During all the other, countless ‘morning after’s, he doesn’t even mention it. All Loki gets is Thor’s dry, stinging quietness, so he stops getting up in time for them to have breakfast together.

It’s like Loki’s alone again. Only worse, because he’s not. And Thor can’t even give him what he needs now.

Loki wants nothing more than for Thor to get angry. He’s used to Thor’s anger, he can handle it just fine. But that never happens. Thor is just so obviously, nakedly _hurt_ by Loki’s actions, and he doesn’t even have the common decency of keeping his emotions trapped, or using them as an excuse to be destructive, like any other child of Odin.

Thor doesn’t hate Loki for what he’s doing. He just gets worried. And that, Loki can’t handle.

He can’t face any of the cups of coffee Thor keeps putting on his nightstand, his insisting that Loki brings his phone whenever he leaves. He’s done nothing to deserve it. All Loki does is ruin everything, and he doesn’t even get repaid in proper currency.

Thor doesn’t understand. There’s no way he could.

 

“You’re going out?” Thor asks.

Loki’s in front of the mirror again, a towel around his waist, setting his hair. Thor forced him to have dinner earlier, which is probably why he has the energy to put the slightest effort in his appearance. He could technically hypnotize anyone he sets his mind on, but he never has. It wouldn’t be the same.

“Of course,” Loki says. “You don’t think I would waste this time if you were the only one seeing me, do you?”

Thor snorts, leaning against the doorframe. Loki feels his eyes on him, and pretends to keep putting every strand in place, even though he’s well past done. Being in the same space without snarling at each other is such a nice change, he’d much rather stay here, pretending to ignore his brother, than going out tonight.

“You can still see your face,” Thor says eventually, and walks to the kitchen. Loki smirks reluctantly at the mirror.

Eventually, he can’t stall anymore. Loki puts a shirt on, picks the keys up from the dresser. He feels Thor being about to say something, so he tries to get out before he does, but of course is not so lucky.

“Can’t you stay in tonight?” Thor says, probably softer than he intended. Loki rolls his eyes.

“Why would I? You’re not that exciting.”

“I’ve seen the men you bring home. You won’t convince me that’s a criteria.”

“It’s not, Thor, I just want to fuck. Now please stop making noise.” Loki makes a big show out of showing Thor how he puts his phone in his pocket as he turns around. “I’ll see you later.”

“Loki.”

Thor’s voice has dropped, like thunder rolling in the distance. Loki feels a spark of that feeling he keeps chasing, the one he most definitely won’t feel when he goes out tonight.

“Whatever it is you’re trying to prove by this nonsense, just stop it. You’re not accomplishing anything by acting like a child.”

“I beg to differ. I get a break from you.”

Thor gives him a glance. 

“I should go with you, then.”

Loki’s pretty sure that whatever he was expecting, this wasn’t it.

“No, no, no, no,” he says as Thor passes him, getting his jacket, flung over the couch.

“Don’t be stupid. I’ve never let you have the things you want.”

“Thor…”

“Come on, then. Let’s go to whatever ones of these disgusting places will get you laid.”

_“Thor!”_

Thor stops in the middle of the putting his shoes on, pretending to be surprised. His dumb fucking face. Loki doesn’t know where his rage is coming from, but he doesn’t mind it. It makes this so much easier.

“I _don’t_ fucking want you there! Okay? Just _stay_ here. It’ll be good practice for you to mind your own business for once.”

It’s nowhere near the worst insult he’s said to Thor. It’s not even the worst thing he’s said since yesterday. And still, Loki sees something change in Thor’s face this time. Something that was open, now being slammed shut.

“Fine,” Thor says.

Loki is pretty sure he doesn’t sound hurt. But he sounds _something._ It’s even more unnerving that Loki doesn’t recognize it. Thor turns around, starts walking towards the bedroom.

”Fuck off, then.”

The door slams shut. It makes it all the more easy for Loki to leave. Even the outside air, humid and clammy New York summer, feels like relief.

Thor keeps doing this to him, keeps getting _involved,_ and Loki doesn’t really understand why. He probably would if he put any thought into it, so he doesn’t. Loki has done nothing but consistently ruin things for him, taint that royal nobility with whatever it is that makes Loki so impossible to love, and yet Thor can’t even do the sensible thing and pull away.

Figures. Thor is an idiot.

Loki lights a cigarette, looks around the dimly lit street. The itch of his restlessness makes his skin feels like it’s buzzing, like if he stopped to even think of what he was doing he’d combust. The mere idea of sitting by a bar, waiting passively to get picked up, suddenly makes him nauseous.

That kick he’s always chasing is further away tonight, because he’s sunken lower. He doesn’t like to think about that either, so Loki ends up at a different place tonight.

He usually doesn’t go to new places. It’s one of the few instincts of self-preservation he’s got left. He tells himself it’s easier to act comfortable, and thus, approachable, _(and thus fuckable)_ when he’s at one of his usual joints, but somehow, he knows. It’d be one step closer to something he’d never be able to bounce back from.

He can’t explain why that doesn’t feel like it matters now. Hell, he can’t even muster the will to ask himself the question, which is probably why, before long, he’s sitting at an unfamiliar bar with a drink he doesn’t remember ordering.

What does it matter. What does any of it matter. Loki takes a long chug out of the glass, feels that comfortable dullness gently spread through his blood, like locusts across wasteland.

That’s always an upside. Nothing fucking matters. What Thor thinks of him. All the potential he’s supposedly wasting.

It can all be drowned in a lineup of shot glasses.

Loki’s working on his second glass when he’s finally chosen.

”Hey there, hot stuff. ”   
  
Loki rolls his eyes. If he had standards, he might’ve considered this not worthy of his time. The man delivering this cliché isn’t even hot. Dark, straight hair, small mouth and big eyes. The remarkably unkind voice in his head reminds Loki that it’s a bit late to pretend that that matters to him.

”Hey,” he says tonelessly. ”Get me another drink. ”

”Aw,” the other man says, with a lack of authenticity that makes some forgotten part of Loki’s senses turn in discomfort. ”Were having a moody night, ain’t we.”

Loki feels his brows crease. This isn’t how people talk, even he knows that, despite not belonging to that category. And being off his fucking head.

”Sit tight, babe. I’ll get us some drinks.”

The man gets off his barstool. Loki is about to say that the bartender is just a foot or so away, but his company is already gone, and Loki doesn’t want to stand up. He’d stumble, it’d be embarrassing, and, as he keeps forgetting, none of it matters.

He just wants to get drunk. To be used. Its what he told Thor, and he so badly wants it to be true.

His company returns, placing a scratched glass in front of him. Loki looks at the yellowish liquid and realizes he was never asked what he wanted, and for some reason, sadness blooms out in his chest like a heavy puff of smoke.

”Sorry,” the man says as Loki wordlessly stares at his offering. ”Not your drink?”

Loki takes the glass, downs it. He feels the other’s eyes follow the movement of his Adams apple. The grains of salt on the rim burns on his lips, as he’s probably dehydrated. As usual.

”So,” the man says. ”What brings you here?”

 _The fuck do you think,_ Loki snarls internally, and jumps as he hears the man next to him bark out a laugh. Maybe he said that out loud. He has no idea, and that’s when a creeping sense of danger starts to break through his intoxication.

This is wrong. Loki’s been drunker than this, _way_ drunker, and this is not how he’s supposed to feel. His vision is tunneling, like he’s looking through the wrong end of a spyglass, and all he can see is his company smiling contentedly, like Loki just passed a test he wasn’t aware he was taking.

”You sure got a point about that,” the man says. ”So what do you say we get out of here, huh?”

Loki feels himself being pulled onto his feet. Hes not sure how that’s happening, until he looks down and sees that the other has a firm grip on his wrist. He’s moving through the bar, which is now just a solid mass of dim lights and rising noise.

Loki wouldn’t say no to sex. Its been a long time since he even considered it an option. But he usually at least has some idea about when its happening, and that can’t be said for whatever’s going on right now. He’s almost certain that this is not good, but its impossible to stop it. While his mind is going haywire, he keeps forgetting how to properly communicate this to his limbs.

Theres no context to what happens next, Loki just catches it in brief glimpses. One second, there’s a vice like grip on his wrist as he bumps into sweaty, faceless bodies. The next, he crashes into the man dragging him, who’s been stopped dead in his tracks just as he’s about to pull Loki out the door.

”Is there a problem?”

Loki hears Thor’s voice as if he’s under water, it’s cold as chipped ice, followed by the other man’s frantic apologies.

The hand holding onto Loki’s arm is yanked away, and replaced with another, which Loki would recognize among a thousand others, among all the filthy handprints he’s allowed to soil him.

Thor’s hand.

It holds onto him, even as Loki leaves himself on Earth, drifts back off into the space between worlds.

 

Even though it’s not even that late when Thor can finally guide Loki onto their bed, he stays up the rest of the night with him. This is entirely for Thor’s own peace of mind, because he’s certain Loki has no idea he’s there.

Which is literally worse than anything. Thor is fine with tending to Loki when he’s hung over, or slurring and clingy, or passed out on the couch, but whatever that fucker at the bar slipped Loki, it’s like it took him away.

Thor basically carried him back to their place out of sheer worry, and to keep himself from turning around and rip the fucking head off the guy who did this, but when they come back, he saw it. Loki is gone. His eyes are open, but glazed and unmoving like a snake’s, and he only moves when Thor pulls his arm, directing him.

Thor knows that whatever it is, will pass through Loki’s system. It probably won’t even take long, and the drug was most likely harmless. At least when that piece of shit isn’t here to take advantage of it. It makes no difference to him.

He stays beside Loki in bed, staring to catch every flicker of his eyelids, every hitch in his breath. Like it’ll be the last time he sees him. So many times have been the last.

 

It’s possible Thor drifts off for a bit, because when Loki speaks up, he’s unreasonably startled. But that might be because of the way he does it.

”Thor?”

Loki’s voice is frayed. It’s like he’s been screaming through the night.

Thor jumps awake, but quickly gathers himself enough to put a hand on his brothers forehead.

”Its okay, Loki. You’re home.”

Loki’s eyes dart around the room like he’s never seen it before, then land on Thor.

”What happened? What’s happening?”

”Its okay…”

Loki stares up at his brother. His eyes are wide and unhappy, and Thor tries to tell himself that Loki’s coming down from a high, whatever the drug did to his brain is crashing down, like shot birds, and he’ll be fine. He will be fine.

But then Loki starts crying, openly, helplessly, heavy tears rolling down his face, and Thor doesn’t know what to do with it.

It’s been so long since Loki let him see him like this, it takes Thor everything to not break down himself. One of them has to keep it together to get through tonight.

”I’m sorry, ” Loki says, grabbing Thor’s hand as it strokes his hair. ”I’m so sorry, Thor, I…”

”It’s okay.”

Thor feels his eyes prickling as he slides down to lay next to his brother, keeping one hand in his.

”Loki, you’re okay. Sssh…”

They stay like this, despite the sun eventually rising. Thor keeps their hands clasped on Loki’s chest, waiting for the tremble of his sobs to die down.


End file.
